Bathory [2008]

This movie follows the life of legendary Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who used to bath in the blood of virgins to stay forever young. A very controversial personality who was willing to kill without any regret made its mark on history. There are many bands, songs and paintings dedicated to her brutal quest for eternal youth, check out the link below for more info. Now lets get back to the movie that tries to untangle the real personality from the myth. We are all human, after all.

Erzsébet Bathory is a countess living in Hungary. She’s very interested in medicine and is actively trying to learn more about it in her makeshift hospital beneath her castle. She’s known as healer but also as a ruthless ruler. After a strange witch called Darvulia saves her from poisoning, she offers her something that would make anyone think twice: a male heir and eternal beauty…

Filmography is beautiful, with lots of great shots of countryside and the medieval setting. This helped with the atmosphere immensely, transporting you to this strange world, especially if you’re not from Europe. There’s also a fair number of very sexual and provocative scenes, and this made Bathory a very interesting experience. However, you should not expect some totally edgy scenes, because this is, after all, European mainstream production effort. It tries to be a bit too much artistic, and that is getting in the way of the story telling, but not too much, so you can follow the story and enjoy in weird dreams of slumber and sex. In the end, I think that the funding hampered the efforts of the crew, and by that I don’t mean that this is some half-assed product but that they had something much bigger in mind, perhaps something like Game of Thrones, but were limited. Still this is definitely a movie worth watching, preferably on Sunday.

Fun Facts: Famke Janssen was originally signed on for the part of Bathory, but for reasons unknown she backed out. Anna Friel read the script and fell in love with it and sent the director a letter convincing him to cast her. It was written in Slovak language, because her babysitter was from Slovakia and helped her writing it.